Content Quality: News, about 899 words (400-1200 range), 8 sources (3-5 minimum). Clear structure: Overview with the dated Apple post and the testing scope, what an app can expose, app skills, what Apple has not settled, and a clearly separated section on the unrelated iOS 27.2 Excluded Apps control. Quotes are short and attributed; the Herald's own statements are limited to dates and the 'cited sources do not say' sentence. Word count and 12 quoted strings re-checked.
Source Verification: Snapshots read from sources/2026-11/apples-siri-ai-developer-preview-lets-apps-add-custom-intents-and-markdown-skills-it-is-testable-only-in-developer-builds-and-internal-testflight/ (all 8 status 200, no suspicious_patterns in the manifest, so nothing to judge under Step 3d). source-0 (Apple Developer news, 'Siri AI is now open to all developers', dated November 3, 2026): CONFIRMED. The snapshot has the lead 'a new Developer Preview enables any developer to integrate their app with Siri AI' for the 27.3 betas of iOS, iPadOS, macOS and visionOS; 'we're also introducing skills to let you teach Siri AI how to combine several actions into a single experience'; 'This preview provides early access before first shipping to customers in a few months; and with submission to the App Store opening up in the spring'; 'we will follow up with more details about the terms and usage policies'; EU unavailability; daily usage limits and 'Expanded access to such features will be available for a fee in the future'. source-1, source-2 and source-3 (Apple documentation pages) are JavaScript-only shells in the stored snapshot (about 400-770 characters of text, only title and meta). Route used instead: Apple's own DocC JSON for each page, fetched live with a browser User-Agent on 2026-11-14 from https://developer.apple.com/tutorials/data/documentation/appintents/<page>.json, sha256 siri-ai-developer-preview.json defc43fbbb4f7057d37aae056323210488bdacc9441d8f564d9622d9acdbed48, bringing-custom-actions-and-content-to-siri.json d8cfc86d9f313e0fc84a0f63ffcb0c7a73d08debce5e03c9113f2dd7b2f9f498, orchestrating-complex-actions-with-app-skills.json 4d696b211e6b16c39251d96e745401ef7d925101c2a4018552cb3db7d1b494d4. All three CONFIRMED from raw text. Preview page: product name 'Siri AI Developer Preview'; testing methods 'Build your app with Xcode, sign it with a development profile, and run it on a device that supports the Siri AI Developer Preview' and 'Make versions of your app available to internal testers in TestFlight'; explicit restriction 'The Siri AI Developer Preview isn't available to external testers in TestFlight or to versions of your app that you publish on the App Store'; Important aside 'During the Siri AI Developer Preview, the App Intents API and Siri functionality may change'; foreground / active Live Activity / continued conversation routing and 'While your app is in the background, requests need to mention your app'; the Siri Integration Advisor and Siri Evaluations text ('lets you script requests to Siri, measure how Siri handles them, and catch changes in how Siri responds'). Custom-actions page: @AppIntent(.tool) macro adding ToolIntent conformance, no macro for intents already conforming to a primary-domain schema, title and description for intents and parameters, entities available to Spotlight or an EnumerableEntityQuery, authentication policy, visibility internal, transferable representations. Skills page: 'Your app can have several app skills, each of which is a Markdown file', Skills.skillsbundle, one .skillsbundle per app target, SKILL.md per skill folder, 'App skills use a subset of the Agent Skills format: the name and description frontmatter fields, and a Markdown body', no other frontmatter or supporting files, 10,000-character body limit, body read only after a match, and the Note 'You can't use app skills to enforce deterministic behavior ... Siri AI doesn't sequentially perform the tool intents that your skill lists'. The documentation pages carry no date; the Herald read them on 2026-11-14 (manifest fetched_at 2026-11-14T16:27Z, my own fetch the same day), consistent with the article. source-4 (InfoQ): CONFIRMED. JSON-LD datePublished 2026-11-13T16:00:00+0000 (read from a live fetch; the stored snapshot has no visible date). It says 'access to Siri AI is restricted to developer builds and internal TestFlight testers', describes the foreground / Live Activity / previous-conversation routing and background name-mention rule, and repeats the EU limit and usage limits. The text restates Apple's post with two Reddit comments added; it does not independently test anything, as the article's wording implies. source-5 (9to5Mac, Benjamin Mayo, published 2026-11-03T19:25:48Z, Nov 3 2026 11:25 am PT): CONFIRMED. 'The first versions of Siri AI were limited to a much smaller set of supported schemas' (9to5Mac's own sentence, not attributed to Apple; the article labels it 9to5Mac's characterisation), 'The app skills sound very similar to what other LLM-driven AI models offer', and 'Apple says the app skills support is only an early developer preview and is scheduled to officially roll out in the spring' (the article's quoted fragment 'is scheduled to officially roll out in the spring' is verbatim). source-6 (Ars Technica, Samuel Axon, published 2026-10-26T20:04Z, 16:04 ET, so October 26 on either basis): CONFIRMED. It reports 'Excluded Apps' that 'allows you to choose which apps Siri, Search, and suggestions can access' in iOS 27.2 and quotes Apple's notes. The text has no mention of the Developer Preview, App Intents or skills (grep count 0). source-7 (EFF, published 2026-10-28T13:04-07:00): CONFIRMED. 'Now Siri AI cannot access the contents of the app. Excluding an app also means you may lose some features.' The text has no mention of the Developer Preview, App Intents or skills (grep count 0); EFF is an advocacy organisation and the article says so. Absence claims checked against every snapshot and the three documentation JSON files: 'Excluded Apps' / 'exclud*' appears in none of Apple's news post, the three docs pages, InfoQ or 9to5Mac (count 0 each), so 'none of the other cited sources discusses the setting' and 'the cited sources do not say how an excluded app interacts with an app that has adopted the preview' hold. All 12 quoted strings were matched verbatim to the page named in the article (one difference is the capital 'T' of 'The first versions' lowered after a lead-in; no change of meaning). Independence recount: Apple's four pages are the subject's own; InfoQ is independent but restates Apple; 9to5Mac is independent commentary on Apple's post; Ars and EFF are independent but cover only the separate consumer setting. Sources that independently verify the Developer Preview scope: none beyond restatement, and the article does not claim otherwise. Allowlist: developer.apple.com, infoq.com, 9to5mac.com, arstechnica.com and eff.org are all in config/source_allowlist.txt; no additions. Anthropic disclosure: not required - the article is not about Anthropic or an Anthropic product, the body has no mention of Anthropic or Claude, and the only related text is Apple's own wording 'Agent Skills format', which the article attributes to Apple's page and does not link to any company.
Factual Accuracy: Headline test. (a) 'Siri AI Developer Preview' is the exact name in Apple's documentation title and text; Apple's news post is titled 'Siri AI is now open to all developers' and calls the feature a 'Developer Preview'. (b) 'Lets Apps Add Custom Intents and Markdown Skills': Apple says apps can use App Intents to bring 'custom actions' to Siri AI (the macro makes existing or new custom app intents available as tools) and can add app skills that are Markdown files; 'Markdown Skills' is the Herald's descriptive shorthand for Apple's 'app skills' (not Apple's term) and 'Custom Intents' is the Herald's shorthand for Apple's 'custom app intents'. Both are accurate descriptions and not renamed actors; I treat them as acceptable, not as a correction. (c) 'Testable Only in Developer Builds and Internal TestFlight': 'Only' is backed by an explicit restriction, not inferred from silence: Apple's page lists exactly those two methods and states the preview 'isn't available to external testers in TestFlight or to versions of your app that you publish on the App Store'; InfoQ independently words it 'restricted to developer builds and internal TestFlight testers'. The summary correctly keeps the qualifier 'Apple's documentation lists' for the testing scope. Freshness and dates: Apple's post is dated November 3, the article states that date in its first sentence, labels InfoQ's report as November 13 and says the unversioned documentation pages were read on November 14; the Ars and EFF items carry their own October dates. The story is an 11-day-old developer-beta announcement with a fresh independent report (InfoQ, Nov 13) and documentation that is current as of the review day. I judge it acceptable as News: the framing is honest about the dates and the headline does not imply the news is from the filing day. Timing: Apple's wording ('before first shipping to customers in a few months'; App Store submission 'opening up in the spring') and 9to5Mac's ('scheduled to officially roll out in the spring', which 9to5Mac attributes to Apple in its own words, not a quote) are compatible rather than contradictory (a ship date a few months after November 3 and App Store submission in the spring are not in conflict), and the article reports both with attribution and declines to reconcile, which is conservative and accurate; no third source or page-date explanation exists among the cited pages. Derived figures: none computed by the Herald. Body claims on routing, skills limits, Siri Integration Advisor, daily limits and EU availability each match the cited page. The one editorial inference is the final sentence that the cited sources do not say how an excluded app interacts with the preview; it is scoped to the cited sources and holds.
Overall Assessment: Accurate, well-dated and conservative coverage of Apple's Siri AI Developer Preview. Headline, summary and lead are each backed by Apple's own pages and the testing restriction is stated explicitly by Apple; the timing difference is reported with attribution rather than reconciled; the Ars and EFF material is correctly kept separate and its limits stated. Approved without corrections. Featured candidacy: 1 - solid, accurate coverage of a beta developer preview that matters to iOS and macOS app developers, but it is a beta with limited independent reporting and a defined developer audience